Are You There?

Are You There is a tragicomedy that tries to examine how to grieve for someone who still haunts both your memories and your kitchen.

The show's first half is deadening. The script draws parallels between estranged relationships and the estrangement of death, not altogether convincingly. It fails in its attempt to be unsettling, and the interactions with Fergus the passive-aggressive ghost are just irritating. The on-stage lighting and slightly hokey practical effects are well done, but they overpower the rest of the production. The audience have an anglepoise lamp shone in their eyes so much that they start wanting to confess their crimes. What’s more, something as simple as an opening and closing door is enough to upstage performances which, like the poltergeist, are animated but lifeless.

However, the play picks up immeasurably in the second half, when it moves from being Truly, Madly, Deeply to Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). Having dropped the atmospherics, Jamie Wightman and Charlotte Duffy prove themselves a very capable, very funny double act. Yet even here the script sorely needs some forward momentum: developing only sporadically, and eventually falling back on cliché. Still, the production’s best moments come when the actors are allowed to play off one another, rather than shout at the walls.

Are You There’s opening should be severely abridged, or even excised. Preserving it needlessly points out weaknesses in the performance, something especially unfair given the promise shown later. As in all such matters, the key is knowing when to let go.